Story Time!

Story Time -- Mt Logan Survey

By Neil R

One responsibility, as an employee of the Soil Conservation Service, was to assist with the snow surveys during the winter months. At that time we had five sites that we were responsible for. This story only involves one, Mt Logan. On this day the task of doing the survey on Mt Logan fell to me and Jim Carly. Jim was one of our Soil Scientists. Our job, whether we wanted to take it or not, was to make the hike to the top of Mt Logan and do the snow survey at the top. Since this was a walk on snow shoes all the way up you had to leave before the sun came up and you knew that you were not going to be home until after dark in the evening. I had been on this survey a number of times before so I was well acquainted with the hike. Everything went quite normally that morning. Jim and I arrived at the trail head at the determined time and began our assault on the mountain. It was generally a nice day for this type of activity. We got to the summit at about noon. We had been able to cross the slide area with out any problem, ( In time past two of our people had been caught in a snow slide at this location) had eaten our lunch and completed the survey. As a rule, on our return trip, once we left the summit we very seldom followed the trail back down the mountain but rather would take a short cut down the slopes by sliding on the back of our snow shoes. This day as I came to the first slope I paused and surveyed the area below. It was in the spring of the year, about March or even April, and there had been a lot of snow melt take place. This would be the last survey made for this water year. So, there were a lot of rocks sticking out of the snow below. As I looked I had already made up my mind that the slope was to dangerous to slide on. The chance of hitting one of the rocks below was very good. I had decided not to take the short cut and go back down the trail when Jim sat down on the back of his snow shoes and down the slope he went. As I stood there and watched about half of the snow on the slope followed him down. As I watched, Jim missed all of the protruding rocks and after a while came to a stop. It looked like he had came through okay so I found a likely spot and sat on the back of my snow shoes and down the slope I went. What snow had not slid off with him followed me and it seemed no matter how I tried to avoid a big rock below I was destined to hit it. I was going pretty fast and had no control over the direction I was going and yes, I collided with that rock. And, yes, it hurt. As a matter of fact it hurt very badly. I was not too fast getting up and when I did Jim said, “You are bleeding”. Well, here I was up on a mountain, miles from any one, and the only way to go was down. So, down we went. Needless to say we did not slid on our snow shoes anymore that day. ( or ever for that matter) We just walked down those slopes with every step hurting. Jim had a bad knee and by the time we got to the truck we were both hurting. When I got home I had to lay on my stomach and let Ella examined the damage to my sit down. She cleaned it up and put a bandage on it.

The next day when I went to work and Jim and I related our story, Boswell, my supervisor sent me to our government Doctor. I remember when I went in to see him his nurse was there with him. He told me to show him the problem. I said not with her in here. (She was in our Ward) She left the room and I took down my pants. He had me lay on the table and proceeded to take off Ella’s bandage. I guess she had used a lot of tape to make it stick. The doctor wanted to know who fixed it, I told him my wife. Then he wanted to know what she had against me. Yet to face, were the days of sitting or trying to sit while the wound healed and to write the accident report and tell how I hurt my sit down. All this was very interesting indeed.